August 20, 2007

Net Gain

David
Vandagriff of Helius figures that the
major players in the push for "patent reform" realize a net gain if patent
enforcement is gutted: "None of the major backers of the current patent reform
legislation have any real stake in improving the patent system. Microsoft, Intel
and Cisco don't owe any of their success to the patent system. Each of these
companies grew large without relying on patents to do so. While they may
currently have patent portfolios, these companies have created and maintained
those portfolios for defensive purposes."

Vandagriff continues:

For supporters of the current legislation, patents are a hassle --
nothing more than an excuse for other companies to sue the tech giants.
Their idea of "improving the patent system" has nothing to do with making
the system better for patent holders. Each of them could lose their entire
patent portfolio with no real harm to their business so long as everyone
else also lost theirs.

IBM may be the exception, having a fulsome patent portfolio from which it
profits handsomely, but its reliance on other computer companies for business
has it playing along as "one of the boys."

Posted by Patent Hawk at August 20, 2007 4:25 PM
| The Patent System

Comments

Is IBM being one of the boys or are they trying to make the patent system a closed exclusive club?

IBM is a company who let the Japanese take the mainframe market from them and Microsoft take the operating system market. The only reason that IBM still exists today is their patent portfolio. IBM is a husk of its former self and a joke.

IBM files hordes of incremental mostly insignificant patents and their conduct is one of the reasons that the patent system is burdened. They sense that their days are numbered, and that eventually they will expire with a whimper.

They have a vision for a patent system which is a king's sport, where only the privileged vested interests can play.

There are two major big business camps promoting reformation of the patent system.

One group simply wants to eviscerate the system to mitigate the consequences of their patent pirating conduct. This group was initially formed by washed up tech companies who lost their ability to produce significant inventions decades ago and a few parasitic companies who never were innovators, rather they are shrewd predators on innovators. They were then joined by the insurance and banking industries, of which one group is only innovative at denying claims and the second group's claim to fame is inventing ever more and larger fees. This group calls themselves the Coalition for Patent Fairness, but are better known as the Coalition for Patent Piracy. Their members have a variety of deficiencies such as being caught cooking their books, putting their customers at risk of being maimed or killed with defective products, committing fraud on the court in litigations over their patent piracy, and various other sins.

The second group are much older companies. They tend to value their patents but would very much like to reign in pesky inventors who nip at their heels. They are also hot on HARMazation of America's patent system, a process which dumbs down the greatest patent system in the world for those company's benefit. This group is known as the 21st Century Patent Coalition. While they are marginally better than the Coalition for Patent Piracy they are also very short term gain oriented businesses.

Both groups prey on the real inventors of our country. Both are prone to abuse the process of law in a bid to bankrupt inventors. Both ship the fruits of American ingenuity to developing countries. Both groups routinely indenture inventors in those countries and will dispose of their empty husks just as they have done to our inventors when they find a slightly better deal elsewhere.

Independent inventors have community ties and when they prosper so do their communities. But when the inventors have their spirits killed by disreputable and predatory large companies, the community suffers a much greater loss than the inventor.

Beware, for these companies are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into "reforming" our patent system to be more friendly to them and much less friendly to upstart startup companies. They know that this is a bargain if it facilitates their appropriation of billions of dollars. It is a fact that many of the companies promoting various special interest "reforms" of the patent system have been caught red handed cheating, lying, and thieving - and they are being held accountable for their poor conduct. Accountability is what drives their whining about bigger than live mythical trolls.